Westward bound

Leaving Melbourne is kind of strange. It is home for all of us now, though this is only really true for N. But the rituals; letting neighbours know, unplugging the electrics, rushing home from work, dropping dvd's and books at the library, and then crawling along Kingsway. Ritualistic. N's been through it a while. Deepti and I have a routine, I drop her at the terminal she takes three suitcases, a pram, a baby, my backpack and her bag to check in and I park the car a mile away at long term parking. It works. We've done this too many times.

N was still alert, frustratingly, at 8pm, 830pm, 9pm, 930pm, 10pm, 1030pm. Read enough time for us to have to chase her around the airport when she got away from us. Over tired, over excited kids are generally NOT ideal passengers.

Anyway, despite my foiled attempt to get a spare seat (pre-select the aisle and middle seat of the last row of the plane), we sardined ourselves into our seats. N struggled, kicked, elmoed ( a new verb for treating elmo roughly) but finally passed out, about 20 mins into the flight and remarkably, we had a peaceful, albeit pinned to our seats by a spread out child flight (and pity the poor lady sitting in the window seat next to us). Being pinned to our seats is neither comfortable nor ideal but it was worth it. N got drink spilled on her, food and more drink, but did not awake. And she woke up as the plane landed.

So we're in Perth, it's 2 am Melbourne time and N is awake. And running. And bua and dadaji are at the airport. There's lights, there's tiredness, there's drifting to sleep, and then there's arriving home and there's more new people and places to run and things to touch like swings and wooden floors. A vase was broken within 20 minutes of arriving.

Finally in bed at 1am Perth time, 4am Melbourne time. I think all who have kids know what this means. Awake at normal Melbourne wake up time (8am, 5am Perth time) and off and running, jumping, singing and wondering why the parents aren't awake.

Falling like a house of cards

Naina doesn't get sick that often, for this I am glad. I don't think we'd last long with a sleepless baby. About once a year (so far) she picks up something, which she kindly passes on to me. Deepti has some sort of baby sickness antibodies so she seemingly never falls.

Last year her February flu was in India, involving vomiting and diarrhoea at opportune moments like driving long distances or outside temples. By the time N recovered, I got sick and was ill all through my last work conference in Singapore. Deepti was unaffected.

This year, we had the February flu - off the road. N sneezed a few times, vomited overnight, refused to sleep till panadol time (knocked her out in less than one minute) and generally resisted for all of 24 hours. She was fine. I was sick for four days. Thanks.

Deepti shrugged it off. I'm beginning to think there's something in that.